Headshot of Natalia Escobar Castrillon

Natalia Escobar Castrillón

Assistant Professor

natalia.escobar@carleton.ca

Natalia Escobar Castrillón is a licensed architect and a professor of Architecture and Social Justice. She holds a PhD in Architecture and a Master in Design from Harvard University, as well as a Masters in Architecture from the University of Seville. Prior to Carleton, Escobar Castrillón taught graduate courses and advised master students at Harvard University, Boston University, Chile Catholic University, and São Paulo University. Prof. Escobar Castrillón’s research and teaching work addresses questions of spatial justice, social equity, collective identity, immigration and displacement, and representation in the built environment. Her publications unpack the complexities of contested buildings and sites worldwide, and discuss the role of design and narrative-making in supporting or silencing social groups. She has taught courses on these topics pursuing engagement practices with local communities.



She has been awarded grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), the Spanish Ministry of Education (TALENTIA), the Jorge Paulo Lemann Foundation, the David Rockefeller Foundation, the Harvard Asia Center, and the São Paulo Academic Research Foundation (FAPESP), among others, which allow her to pursue fieldwork in Europe, Latin America, and Asia where she studied the intersection of architecture with questions of power, gender, race, and social class through the work of architects Lu Wengyu and Wang Shu, and Lina Bo. More recently, Prof. Escobar was awarded a Carleton-SSHRC Development Grant to produce visualizations of oppression and resilience of migrant populations in partnership with the Inter-American Development Bank. This work been presented in conferences and accepted for publication in the upcoming Journal from the Society for the Study of Canadian Architecture.



Prof. Escobar Castrillón is also the founder of the architectural journal Oblique that received the AIA NY Center for Architecture Publications Award and aims to revise hegemonic historic narratives through innovative design practices and discourses. She is also the founder of Foreign-Futures design lab, where she collaborates with local and international partners to develop equity-centered approaches to urban planning and design.

Education

PhD in Architecture Histories and Theories, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

MDes Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA   

MArch, University of Seville, Spain

Courses

PhD Dissertation Advisor

MArch Thesis Advisor 

ARCS 5032 – MArch – MArch 1 Studio 2  

ARCS 5106 – MArch – MArch Option Studio  

ARC 5020 – MArch – Theories of Modernity

ARCC 3105 – BAS – Studio 3  

ARCC 3301 – BAS – Conservation Studio 2  

Research

Foreign Futures  – Research Lab

Oblique Journal – Founding Editor

Escobar, “Foreign Bodies: Mapping Urban Experiences with Racialized Immigrant Settler and Refugee Women to Disrupt Exclusionary Spatial Systems.” The Journal of the Society for the Study of Architecture in Canada 48, no. 1 (2023). (Forthcoming)

Escobar, “Dismantling Symbolic Violence: The Critical Conservation of Plantation Architecture,” RAIC-CCUSA 2021 Conference Proceedings, 2022.

Escobar, “Anthropophagic Phenomenology: Encounter at Lina Bo’s SESC Pompeia Cultural and Leisure Center,” in The New Urban Condition: Architecture and the City in the 21st Century, Eds. Tom Avermaete, Leandro Medrano, Luiz Recamán, New York: Routledge, 2021.

Domínguez, Angela R., J. Fernández, N. Escobar, “Architecture of the Scape: Thermal Assessment of Refugee Shelter Design in the Extremes Climates of Jordan, Afghanistan and South Sudan,” Journal of Building Engineering (Q1), Vol. 42, 2021. 

Escobar, “From Ideology to Ontology,” in Ediciones ARQ Michael Hays, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago (2017).

Escobar, “Interview with David Chipperfield: Architecture is Never Dead” in Materia Arquitectura: Conservation as an Expanded Field, no. 11 (2015). Indexed journal: Avery Index, Latindex, ARLA.

Founding Ed. N. Escobar, Oblique, A Journal on Critical Conservation, 2016-present (Recipient of the 2017 Haskell Fellowship from the AYA New York Center for Architecture) 

Ed. N. EscobarMateria Arquitectura Journal: Conservation as an Expanded Field, no. 11 (2015), Universidad de San Sebastián, Chile. (Bilingual) Indexed journal: Avery Index, Latindex, ARLA, Web of Science Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI), EBSCO

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